Wall Street reform tomorrow? Don’t count on it

WALL STREET REFORM TOMORROW? DON’T COUNT ON IT…. On Thursday afternoon Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced he was tired of waiting — Wall Street reform would be brought to the Senate floor for a debate on Monday. “I’m not going to waste any more time of the American people,” he declared.

It started the clock on the first procedural vote — the motion to proceed — to be held at 5:15 p.m. (ET) tomorrow. Republicans will, of course, filibuster the motion — it’s what they do — but Dems were hopeful that at least one GOP senator would vote to let the Senate debate the legislation.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd and ranking Republican Richard Shelby said Sunday they don’t have a deal yet on the financial regulatory reform bill – but said they were on the verge of striking a bipartisan accord. […]

“I think we’re closer than we’ve ever been,” Shelby said, adding that there are “two or three things” that need to be resolved, singling out efforts to end “too-big-to-fail” financial institutions.

The two men and their staffs planned to meet later Sunday, but Shelby said they needed more time to get a deal. And the Republican doubted that Democrats “will not get cloture” when they try to break a GOP filibuster to bring a bill that passed the Banking Committee to the Senate floor Monday evening.

“Will we get a bill tomorrow?” Shelby said on the same program. “I doubt it.”

Dodd sounded optimistic, though, that if the first procedural vote fails, as now appears likely, they’ll still figure out how to craft a deal later this week.

In the interim, Democrats will likely try to exploit the GOP obstructionism. Expect the message to be something along the lines of, “Even now, Republicans won’t let the Senate so much as debate a bill to bring some safeguards to Wall Street.”